I was contacted a few weeks ago about some bees living in a wall in woodland hills Utah. I took the 40 min. drive south to go take a look and see if it was one I could handle.
The bees were entering under some 1x12 ceder siding that was put over some other sheeting. The other sheet has hole drilled to accommodate having insulation blown in. The holes may have been sealed at one time but were wide open for the bees to gain access. I set up a time to get back down there over the week end and get them out of the wall space. When I first check the hive out it was buzzing with activity. I thought it was going to be a rather large hive. It sounded like it had been there for a few years.
The time came and I got set up to extract the colony of bees. I removed the 1x12 ceder and pulled off the under sheeting. It was still cool in the morning and the bees weren't flying yet. The numbers looked rather small than when I had checked them out the week before. I begin to remove the combs peace by bees while I sucked up the exposed bees with the black hole (bee vac). As I cut deeper into the hive I was getting worried as there was a very large lack of brood, I never did find any. I did find evidence of a laying worker just starting to make progress. I didn't save any comb and all bees were placed onto drawn comb I had ready to go. There was a little honey but since I couldn't confirm the hive had never been sprayed by the old home owners I didn't see a need to same any of it. Took about 4 hours to remove, clean up, and put back together. I had some extra queens around and they were happy to get one of those, not so happy to be sucked into the abyss which was made clear when placing them on the hive stand at the bee yard.
I really wanted to video the whole thing but just after starting the camera went dead so all I got was a few pics.
The view after opening the hive up
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You can see some old wax moth cocoons that were sealed between the wall and tar paper with propolis.
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Some the the crazy comb they had built.
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Removing chunks of comb.
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Multiple eggs in a queen cell.
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All cleaned out.
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When I was just about done with the removal I had a swarm call come in. Once I was done I head over to get since it was on the way to the bee yard. Turned out to bee a nice swarm.
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